Hospital Leave for Central Government Employees
Hospital leave under Rule 46 paid full pay for 120 days for an injury from the risks of duty. It was omitted on 14 December 2018 and replaced by WRIIL.
Hospital leave was a head of leave under Rule 46 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 for an illness or injury directly due to the risks incurred in the course of official duties, and it no longer exists. The CCS (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules 2018, notified as G.S.R. 1209(E) on 11 December 2018, omitted Rule 46 with effect from 14 December 2018. In the consolidated text updated as on 24 September 2024, Rule 46 reads simply Omitted.
While it ran, the rule was narrow and generous at the same time. Rule 46(1) reached only two categories, Class IV government servants and those Class III government servants whose duties involved the handling of dangerous machinery, explosive materials, poisonous drugs and the like. For them Rule 46(3) paid leave salary at the earned-leave rate for the first 120 days and at the half-pay-leave rate afterwards, with no maximum in days, and Rule 46(4) kept the whole spell off the leave account.
The leave existed because some government work carries a physical risk that the employee did not choose. A worker poisoned by the drugs they handled or injured by the machinery they operated would otherwise have spent their own earned leave or half pay leave recovering from a hazard of the job. Rule 46 met that case for the manual and industrial edge of the civil service, in a form close to special disability leave under Rules 44 and 45 but materially worse in one respect that few sources record: it did not count as duty for pension.
This article sets out the text of Rule 46 sub-rule by sub-rule, who fell inside and outside it, why hospitalisation was never a condition, how it compared with special disability leave and with ordinary sick leave, what the abolition of Group D did to it after 2008, and how work-related illness and injury leave replaced it in December 2018.
What hospital leave was
Hospital leave was a special kind of leave, granted for a condition the job caused rather than for ordinary sickness. Rule 46(1) of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 empowered the authority competent to grant leave to grant it to a qualifying government servant, while under medical treatment in a hospital or otherwise, for illness or injury if such illness or injury was directly due to risks incurred in the course of their official duties.
Three features set it apart from the ordinary heads of leave. It was granted on a medical certificate from an authorised medical attendant under Rule 46(2). Its leave salary started at the earned-leave rate rather than the half-pay rate, under Rule 46(3)(i). And it was not debited against the leave account at all, under Rule 46(4).
Rule 46 ran to five sub-rules and no more. Eligibility and the duty-risk gate sat in 46(1), the medical certificate in 46(2), the pay split in 46(3), the leave-account rule and the 28 month combination cap in 46(4), and the set-off against statutory compensation in 46(5). Nothing in the rule dealt with pension, promotion or increment.
Who could take it: Class IV servants and hazardous-duty Class III servants
Rule 46(1) named two limbs, and only the second carried a risk test. Limb (a) covered Class IV government servants outright. Limb (b) covered such Class III government servants whose duties involved the handling of dangerous machinery, explosive materials, poisonous drugs and the like, or the performance of hazardous tasks.
The distinction matters. A Class IV servant qualified on status alone, whatever the post involved. A Class III servant qualified only if the post carried one of the named hazards, so a Class III clerk in an ordinary office was outside the rule while a Class III worker on a dangerous process was inside it.
The rule text was never modernised into the Group nomenclature, and that is a drafting fact rather than a substantive one. Rule 6-A of the CCS (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules 1965 provides that every reference to Class I, Class II, Class III and Class IV in any rule in force immediately before 1 December 1965 is read as a reference to Group A, Group B, Group C and Group D respectively. Rule 46 was therefore read as covering Group D servants and hazardous-duty Group C servants, which is how departmental practice described it, but the words on the page said Class IV and Class III until the day the rule was omitted.
Who fell outside Rule 46
Hospital leave never reached the industrial and work-charged staff it is often assumed to have covered, because those employees are outside the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 entirely. Rule 2 excludes workmen employed in industrial establishments at clause (d) and persons employed in work-charged establishments at clause (e). An industrial employee in an ordnance factory took leave under the terms governing that establishment, not under Rule 46, however hazardous the work.
Rule 2 draws three further lines that still decide the position today. Clause (a) excludes railway servants, clause (f) excludes members of the All India Services, and clause (b) excludes persons in casual, daily-rated or part-time employment. Clause (j) excludes persons governed for leave purposes by the Fundamental Rules or the Civil Service Regulations.
The practical effect was to confine hospital leave to regular civil servants of the Union in Class IV posts or hazardous Class III posts. That is a smaller population than the description “workplace-injury leave for government workers” suggests, and the exclusions are the reason the 2018 abolition left several groups untouched.
Treatment in a hospital or otherwise
Hospitalisation was never a condition of hospital leave, despite the name. Rule 46(1) granted the leave while the servant was under medical treatment in a hospital or otherwise, so treatment at home, at a dispensary or as an outpatient qualified on the same terms as admission to a ward. What Rule 46(2) required instead was the production of a medical certificate from an authorised medical attendant.
This is the sharpest single difference between hospital leave and the head that replaced it. Rule 44(1), as substituted in 2018, gives full pay and allowances during the entire period of hospitalisation, and Rule 44(2) then governs the position beyond hospitalisation on a different and time-limited basis. The successor’s headline benefit is therefore keyed to admission in a way Rule 46 never was.
The terms: the earned-leave rate for 120 days, then half pay
Rule 46(3) fixed no maximum period in days. The leave could be granted for such period as the authority granting it considered necessary, on leave salary equal to that on earned leave for the first 120 days of any period of such leave under 46(3)(i), and equal to leave salary during half pay leave for the remaining period under 46(3)(ii).
The taper was absolute. Special disability leave allowed the employee to hold the higher rate for a further 120 days at the cost of a half-pay-leave debit, under the proviso to Rule 44(7)(b). Rule 46 carried no equivalent proviso, so once a covered servant had used 120 days the rate dropped to the half-pay-leave rate and stayed there for the rest of the spell.
The rate is described in the rule by reference rather than by figure, which matters when leave salary is computed. Leave salary while on earned leave is the pay drawn immediately before proceeding on leave; leave salary during half pay leave is half that amount. Hospital leave paid whatever those two heads paid at the time, so a pay revision moved it automatically.
The leave account and the 28 month combined cap
Rule 46(4) did two things in one sentence. Hospital leave shall not be debited against the leave account, and it may be combined with any other kind of leave which may be admissible, provided the total period of leave after such combination does not exceed 28 months.
The first limb was the real benefit. An employee taking ordinary sick leave spends half pay leave or commuted leave from a finite account and has less left for anything else. A covered servant on hospital leave spent nothing, so a long recovery from a duty-caused injury did not cost them the leave they had saved for a family need or for leave preparatory to retirement.
The second limb is the only ceiling the rule contained, and it is regularly misquoted as a standalone maximum of 28 months of hospital leave. It was not. It was a cap on the combination: hospital leave taken with earned leave, extraordinary leave or any other admissible kind could not run beyond 28 months in total, and hospital leave taken alone had no stated limit at all beyond what the sanctioning authority considered necessary.
Set-off against Workmen’s Compensation and ESI benefit
Rule 46(5) stopped the employee being paid twice for the same injury, and its first limb was narrower than most summaries allow. Rule 46(5)(a) applied only where the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1923, now the Employees’ Compensation Act 1923, applied to the person, and it reduced the leave salary by the amount of compensation payable under Clause (d) of sub-section (1) of Section 4 of that Act. Section 4(1)(d) is the half-monthly payment for temporary disablement, so the set-off bit against the periodic payment that overlapped the leave, not against the lump sums payable under clauses (a) to (c) for death or permanent disablement.
Rule 46(5)(b) was broader in form. Where the Employees’ State Insurance Act 1948 applied to the person, the leave salary was reduced by the amount of benefit payable under that Act for the corresponding period, without limitation to a particular section.
The successor kept only half of this. Rule 44(3) reduces work-related illness and injury leave salary by the amount of compensation paid under the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1923, and carries no Employees’ State Insurance clause at all.
Hospital leave did not count as duty for pension
Rule 46 contained no provision counting the leave as duty, and the omission was deliberate rather than accidental, because the neighbouring rule contained exactly such a clause. Rule 44(6) provided that special disability leave shall be counted as duty in calculating service for pension and shall not, except for leave granted under the proviso to clause (b) of sub-rule (7), be debited against the leave account.
Hospital leave got the second half of that sentence and not the first. Rule 46(4) protected the leave account; nothing in Rule 46 protected qualifying service for pension. A Class IV servant on an extended spell of hospital leave therefore preserved their leave balance while their qualifying service was governed by the ordinary rules for the leave in question, whereas a colleague on special disability leave for the same duty-caused injury had the period counted as duty under Rule 44(6).
That is the least reported difference between the two heads, and it ran in the opposite direction to the eligibility rules. The lower-paid categories that hospital leave was designed for got the weaker of the two duty-caused leaves on the point that decides a pension.
Hospital leave and special disability leave compared
The two duty-caused leaves overlapped in purpose and differed on four measurable points, set out below as they stood immediately before the 2018 amendment.
| Point | Hospital leave (Rule 46) | Special disability leave (Rules 44 and 45) |
|---|---|---|
| Who was covered | Class IV servants, and Class III servants on hazardous duties (Rule 46(1)) | Any government servant, permanent or temporary (Rule 44(1)) |
| Cause | Illness or injury directly due to risks incurred in the course of official duties | Disability from injury intentionally inflicted or caused in the due performance of duty (Rule 44), extended to accidental injury and to illness incurred in a particular duty (Rule 45) |
| Maximum period | None stated; combination with other leave capped at 28 months (Rule 46(4)) | 24 months for any one disability (Rule 44(3)) |
| Full-rate period | First 120 days only, no extension (Rule 46(3)) | First 120 days, extendable by a further 120 days against a half-pay-leave debit (proviso to Rule 44(7)(b)) |
| Leave account | Not debited (Rule 46(4)) | Not debited, except leave taken under the proviso (Rule 44(6)) |
| Counts as duty for pension | No provision | Yes (Rule 44(6)) |
| Time limit to claim | None stated | Disability to manifest within three months of the occurrence, relaxable (Rule 44(2)) |
Both heads shared the statutory set-off. Rule 44(8)(a) and Rule 46(5)(a) used identical words to reduce leave salary by the Section 4(1)(d) compensation, and Rule 44(8)(b) and Rule 46(5)(b) did the same for Employees’ State Insurance benefit.
Hospital leave and ordinary sick leave compared
Hospital leave and sick leave answered different questions, and a covered servant could need both in the same year. There is no head called sick leave in the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972: an employee’s own illness is met by half pay leave under Rule 29, on a medical certificate under Rule 32, or by commuted leave at twice the half-pay-leave debit under Rule 30. Both are debited to the leave account and both are finite.
The gate in Rule 46(1) was the whole distinction. An illness had to be directly due to risks incurred in the course of official duties, so a Class IV servant who caught influenza took half pay leave, while the same servant poisoned by a drug they handled at work took hospital leave. A department that treated every illness in a hazardous post as a Rule 46 case would have been misapplying the rule.
Effect of the abolition of Group D
The abolition of Group D emptied limb (a) of Rule 46(1) roughly a decade before the rule itself was omitted. The 6th Central Pay Commission recommended that no future recruitment be made to Group D and that existing Group D employees be placed in pay band PB-1, after which the erstwhile Group D posts were upgraded and reclassified as Group C. The multi-tasking staff cadre that took their place sits at Level 1 of the pay matrix and is Group C.
The classification rule in force today confirms the position by pay level. Under Department of Personnel and Training notification S.O. 3964(E) dated 9 August 2018, made under the proviso to Article 309 read with Rule 6 of the CCS (CCA) Rules 1965 and superseding S.O. 3570(E) dated 9 November 2017, a post carrying Levels 1 to 5 of the pay matrix is Group C, Levels 6 to 9 is Group B, and Levels 10 to 18 is Group A. No level is classified as Group D.
By 14 December 2018, therefore, Rule 46 operated only through limb (b). The status-based entitlement of the Class IV servant had no occupant left, and the surviving reach of hospital leave was the hazardous-duty Class III staff, read as Group C. Anyone reconstructing entitlements for a period after 2008 has to apply the rule on that footing rather than on the two-limb structure the text still showed.
How hospital leave was replaced in 2018
The 7th Central Pay Commission recommended that special disability leave, hospital leave and sick leave be subsumed into a single duty-related head, and the Department of Personnel and Training gave effect to it in one notification. DoPT Notification No. 11020/01/2017-Estt.(L) dated 11 December 2018, issued as the CCS (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules 2018 and numbered G.S.R. 1209(E), substituted Rule 44 with work-related illness and injury leave and omitted Rules 45 and 46. It took effect on publication in the Gazette on 14 December 2018.
The same notification carried out three unrelated changes, which is why it is cited across the leave corpus: it substituted Rule 28 on earned leave for Vacation Department staff, substituted Rule 29 on half pay leave, and substituted Rule 43-C on child care leave, extending that head to single male government servants. A clarificatory Office Memorandum, also numbered 11020/01/2017-Estt.(L), followed on 30 August 2019.
What changed for the employee under Rule 44
Work-related illness and injury leave is wider in eligibility and richer during hospitalisation, and it takes something back that Rule 46 left alone. Rule 44 applies to any government servant, permanent or temporary, who suffers an illness or injury attributable to or aggravated in the performance of official duties or in consequence of official position, so the hazardous-duty eligibility test of Rule 46(1) disappeared.
Rule 44(1) grants full pay and allowances during the entire period of hospitalisation, with no ceiling. Rule 44(2)(a) then gives a government servant other than a military officer full pay and allowances for the six months immediately following hospitalisation and half pay for the twelve months beyond that, and allows the half-pay period to be commuted to full pay against a corresponding debit of half pay leave. Rule 44(2)(b) gives officers of the Central Armed Police Forces six months at full pay and allowances and then full pay only for a further twenty-four months, and Rule 44(2)(c) gives personnel below officer rank full pay and allowances with no limit on the period.
The clawback is in Rule 44(4): no earned leave or half pay leave is credited during the period an employee is on work-related illness and injury leave. Rule 46 had no such provision, so a covered servant on hospital leave continued to earn credits in the ordinary way. For a short spell the new head is plainly better; for a spell running across several credit dates, the lost accrual is a real cost that the older rule did not impose.
Where hospital leave still applies
For central government civilian employees the answer is nowhere. The head is gone from the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 and a duty-caused illness or injury is met by Rule 44. The 2018 amendment changed only those rules, though, and Rule 2 had already put several groups outside them.
Railway servants are excluded by Rule 2(a) and are governed by their own establishment code, which the 2018 amendment did not touch. Members of the All India Services are excluded by Rule 2(f) and are governed by the All India Services (Leave) Rules 1955, with special disability leave for them sitting in the separate All India Services (Special Disability Leave) Regulations 1957. Several State governments framed their own leave rules on the pre-2018 CCS pattern and may still carry a hospital leave provision for their hazardous-duty and industrial staff.
The one place the phrase survives inside the CCS rules is by proximity rather than substance. Rule 47, seamen’s sick leave, sits immediately after the omitted Rule 46 and grants leave at full pay for up to six weeks to an officer, warrant officer or petty officer on a Government vessel undergoing treatment on the vessel or in hospital, with three months for a seaman disabled in the exercise of duty. It is a separate head with its own conditions and it was not affected in 2018.
Applicability
Hospital leave under Rule 46 of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972 does not apply to central government civilian employees. Rule 46 was omitted by the CCS (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules 2018, G.S.R. 1209(E) dated 11 December 2018, with effect from 14 December 2018, and an illness or injury attributable to duty is now met by work-related illness and injury leave under Rule 44. Railway servants, All India Services officers, industrial and work-charged staff were never governed by Rule 46, being excluded by Rule 2 of those rules, and State government employees follow their own leave rules. An employee confirms the current entitlement under the rules that govern their own service.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What was hospital leave?
Is hospital leave still available to central government employees?
Who could take hospital leave?
Did hospital leave apply to industrial or work-charged staff?
Did hospital leave require the employee to be in hospital?
How much hospital leave was allowed, and at what pay?
Was hospital leave debited to the leave account?
Was hospital leave reduced by Workmen's Compensation or ESI benefit?
Did hospital leave count as duty for pension?
How did hospital leave differ from special disability leave?
How did hospital leave differ from sick leave?
Did the abolition of Group D affect hospital leave?
What replaced hospital leave?
Do railway servants and All India Services officers still have hospital leave?
Related Articles
- Work related illness and injury leave
- Special disability leave
- Sick leave
- Earned leave
- Half pay leave
- Commuted leave
- Leave not due
- Extraordinary leave
- Quarantine leave
- Seamen’s sick leave
- Departmental leave
- Special casual leave
- Casual leave
- Child care leave
- Sabbatical leave
- Study leave
- Vacation department leave
- Leave preparatory to retirement
- CCS (Leave) Rules 1972
- CCS (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules 1965
- All India Services (Leave) Rules 1955
- Leave salary
- Leave encashment
- Employees’ Compensation Act 1923
- Employees’ State Insurance (ESI)
- Industrial employees
- Multi-tasking staff salary
- Pay matrix
- Central government pension
- Disability pension
- Central Government Health Scheme
- Fixed medical allowance
- Central Armed Police Forces
- Railway employees
- 6th Central Pay Commission
- 7th Central Pay Commission
- Department of Personnel and Training
- Central government employees in India
External references
- Department of Personnel and Training, CCS (Leave) Rules 1972
- Consolidated text of the CCS (Leave) Rules 1972
- Department of Personnel and Training, acts and rules
- All India Services (Leave) Rules 1955
- All India Services (Special Disability Leave) Regulations 1957
- Report of the 7th Central Pay Commission
- Gazette of India
References
- CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 46(1) (hospital leave), as in force before 14 December 2018: grantable to (a) Class IV government servants and (b) such Class III government servants whose duties involve the handling of dangerous machinery, explosive materials, poisonous drugs and the like, or the performance of hazardous tasks, while under medical treatment in a hospital or otherwise, for illness or injury directly due to risks incurred in the course of their official duties.
- CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 46(2) to 46(5), as in force before 14 December 2018: medical certificate from an authorised medical attendant (46(2)); leave salary equal to that on earned leave for the first 120 days and equal to that during half pay leave for the remainder, for such period as the granting authority considers necessary (46(3)); not debited against the leave account and combinable with any other kind of leave subject to a total of 28 months (46(4)); leave salary reduced by compensation payable under Clause (d) of sub-section (1) of Section 4 of the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1923 (46(5)(a)) and by benefit payable under the Employees’ State Insurance Act 1948 for the corresponding period (46(5)(b)).
- CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 2 (extent of application): the rules do not apply to railway servants (clause (a)), persons in casual, daily-rated or part-time employment (clause (b)), workmen employed in industrial establishments (clause (d)), persons employed in work-charged establishments (clause (e)), or members of the All India Services (clause (f)).
- CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rules 44 and 45, as in force before 14 December 2018 (special disability leave): 24 months for any one disability (44(3)); counted as duty in calculating service for pension and not debited to the leave account (44(6)); earned-leave rate for the first 120 days and half-pay-leave rate thereafter, with an option to draw the higher rate for a further 120 days against a half pay leave debit (44(7) and its proviso); statutory set-off (44(8)); extension to accidental injury and to illness incurred in a particular duty (Rule 45).
- Department of Personnel and Training Notification No. 11020/01/2017-Estt.(L) dated 11 December 2018, issued as the Central Civil Services (Leave) (Fourth Amendment) Rules, 2018, G.S.R. 1209(E), effective on publication in the Gazette on 14 December 2018: substituted Rule 44 with work-related illness and injury leave and omitted Rules 45 and 46, and separately substituted Rules 28, 29 and 43-C.
- CCS (Leave) Rules, 1972, Rule 44 as substituted (work-related illness and injury leave): full pay and allowances during the entire period of hospitalisation (44(1)); beyond hospitalisation, full pay and allowances for six months and half pay for a further twelve months, commutable to full pay against a half pay leave debit, for a government servant other than a military officer (44(2)(a)), six months at full pay and allowances and twenty-four months at full pay for Central Armed Police Forces officers (44(2)(b)) and no limit for personnel below officer rank (44(2)(c)); set-off against Workmen’s Compensation Act 1923 compensation (44(3)); no credit of earned leave or half pay leave during the period (44(4)).
- Consolidated text of the Central Civil Services (Leave) Rules, 1972, updated as on 24 September 2024, Department of Personnel and Training, in which Rules 45 and 46 read Omitted and Rule 47 (seamen’s sick leave) follows.
- CCS (Classification, Control and Appeal) Rules, 1965, Rule 6-A: references to Class I, Class II, Class III and Class IV in any rule in force immediately before 1 December 1965 are to be read as references to Group A, Group B, Group C and Group D respectively.
- Department of Personnel and Training notification S.O. 3964(E) dated 9 August 2018, made under the proviso to Article 309 read with Rule 6 of the CCS (CCA) Rules 1965 and superseding S.O. 3570(E) dated 9 November 2017: posts carrying Levels 10 to 18 of the pay matrix are Group A, Levels 6 to 9 Group B and Levels 1 to 5 Group C.
- Department of Personnel and Training Office Memorandum No. 11020/01/2017-Estt.(L) dated 30 August 2019 (clarification on work related illness and injury leave).